Sharing Web Resources

I still have not received a newsletter from The Global Fund for Children. The website doesn’t contain many links to other websites. The few that it does have are to corporate sponsors and foundations.  

I thoroughly searched through the section of the website that describes The Global Fund for Children’s impact. In the last year alone they reached 1 million children and hope to bring their total to 10 million by 2015. This means that thousands of children are going to school instead of to work and thousands more are protecting themselves from HIV, escaping the bonds of slavery, and getting the childhood they deserve.

Since 1997, the Global Fund for Children has invested $25.6 million in more than 500 grassroots organizations in 78 countries worldwide. They specialize in maximizing our donors’ investment in the developing world. Here’s how:

• They Find What Works-Program officers use their regional expertise to scout out the most promising organizations operating in marginalized communities. An annual pool of more than 2,000 organizations is whittled down to about 150 that they visit, of those approximately 50 new grantees are selected to be funded.
• They Invest Strategically-They identify innovative groups as they emerge, and over the course of three to six years, help them to grow and thrive using flexible, strategic investments. 
• They Spread the Word-Their first job is to find community-based organizations that are changing children’s lives—then help them grow with management support, training, and leverage. 
• They Check Our Work-They track their grantees’ development. Each of their grantee partners produces measurable outcomes, whether it’s helping more migrant children stay in school, getting more girls to understand the risks of HIV/AIDS, or providing more counseling sessions to child trafficking survivors. 
• They Keep Their Costs Low-Their grantees operate on a shoestring budget—and they follow their model, maximizing every dollar and putting the money where it counts.

The website contains blogs from all the regions. Through these blogs, I found many examples of information that adds to my understanding of equity and excellence in early care and education. GFC works around the globe with displaced families in places such as Beirut, Lebanon and Dili, Timor-Leste.
In Luhansk, Ukraine GFC partners with the Association of Disabled Young People of the Eastern Donbass, or AMI-East for short which provides educational opportunities for children with disabilities.
In Washington DC, GFC supports the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project (HCPP). The number of children at DC General shelter has reached an astounding 600 up from about 200 children in 2011. HCPP works directly with many of these children, providing weekly activities, healthy snacks, and opportunities to play and learn at DC General and various emergency shelters and transitional housing sites in the District of Columbia.

The new insight I gained doesn’t have to do with the early childhood field but I was very surprised. First, I didn’t know that January was National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. The most astounding fact I found out is that child trafficking is a huge problem in the U.S. It is estimated that 90% of runaways in the U.S. end up trafficked into the commercial sex industry. Over 100,000 children are subject to child trafficking every year in the U.S. alone.